It Is What It Is
by Scelerata
Summary: Jean-Luc Picard was a very dishonest man, in a lot of ways that not a lot of people cared about. [Qcard.]


Space is incredible. It's unfathomable. It's a vast, unending expanse of darkness and light and nothingness and everything, too; millions of stars spinning around with billions of planets dancing in their orbits and trillions, quadrillions, an uncountable number of people and plants and animals and things the human mind can't even comprehend, all of them doing their best to just exist in a big, scary, world.

No.

A small world.

A tiny, insignificant world among uncounted other insignificant worlds in a universe whose depths are far too vast, far too deep to be plumbed, full of truths that can't be understood, can't even really be known. Not all of them. Not to any one entity. It's all too much.

Too big.

Too beautiful.

Too frightening.

Space is frightening. It's unknown. It's dark and it's cold and it never ends. So many spinning stars with so many dancing planets and so many billions, trillions, quadrillions, so many infinite people, places, and things in whom you can't put faith because given one really good opportunity they'll hurt you. Kill you. Maim you. Rape your wives and your children as you watch and then burn them alive. Feed you to something you've never seen before whose very visage defies description. Walk on the cold, congealed remains of your corpse and forget you.

Forget you ever even existed.

Yes, space is forgetful. Space is the final realization of how insignificant everything is. Space is one tiny star in an unending sea of stars. It's one tiny planet among eight circling that tiny star. It's one lone person among millions of people on a tiny planet circling a tiny star in an infinitely large expanse of stars, and all the fame and prestige you could possibly hope to garner can't save you from obscurity because even if every human knows your name, every Klingon, every Cardassian, every Bajoran and Romulan and fuck all else there is to know out there knows who you are, you're still not even a blip on the radar of the cosmos. You're just one tiny speck of dust floating unseen in an inky black mass.

Space…is lonely.

Sometimes you hear about the adventurous souls who load themselves, maybe a spouse and a child, into a shuttlecraft, and spend their whole life traveling the stars; adrift on an endless sea of discovery. And it sounds enchanting, and maybe it is, maybe it's the most enchanting thing a human being could ever experience, but there's a reason why so few take that leap—_space is lonely._ Space is adventure. It's new worlds and new people, new ways of thinking and new knowledge to share. It's discovery in its purest form.

And it's lonely.

Space is distance. Space is time. Space is being far away from so much of what made you _you_. Space is saying goodbye to your family. To your town. To your country, to your world. Space is long stretches of darkness in tiny rooms. Space is days and months and years where there should be minutes and seconds. Space is transient. Space is being reduced to an outsider whenever you go, because you are, you're an outsider, and you always will be to every last person you'll ever meet in your journey, and even if they say you're welcome, swear you're one of them, you're not. You'll never be. You're just a soft, pale, squishy human who can't really understand what it means to be whatever species has become the flavor of the day in your conquest.

Space is insignificance.

And insignificance is painful.

A good captain doesn't talk about these things, though. A good captain shouldn't even entertain the idea. Insignificance is ego. It's attention lust. It's unbecoming. Unprofessional.

But insignificance is fact.

If Jean-Luc Picard deserved commendation for anything in his career, it would not be for service and it would not be for diplomacy, although he had an exemplary record in both.

It would be for his ability to lie.

Jean-Luc Picard was a very dishonest man, in a lot of ways that not a lot of people cared about. Everything about him was, in some way, a mistruth. And that's not to say he was a bad man, or a bad captain; in fact, it was his dishonesty that made him an exceptional leader and commanding officer. If he felt fear, he did not tremble, and if he had doubts, he rarely shared them. To his officers he was a clever, kind, and capable man.

But he was lonely, and he was insignificant.

And no one knew it.

Q knew it.

Q knew everything.

Q was not insignificant. Q was omnipotent. Q was omniscient. Q was god, or maybe not god, but close enough, or perhaps too close. He was mercurial and he was vindictive and he was cryptic. He saw everything that would be; that could be. He saw everything that wasn't. He was bigger than the entire universe and all the laws of time and physics and everything else that clever men in tweed suits talk about in verbose ways that normal men can't understand.

And yet, despite all this, he was lonely.

Not in the same way that Picard was lonely. Picard saw his insignificance in a vast and unknowable universe. Q knew all, and saw all. Every past and present, every had-been and could-be. The universe was small and predictable—and there was no room for him inside it. Time would pass, stars would die, the universe would collapse, but he was permanent. The cycle would continue, a million, billion, trillion times over.

And there he'd be. Alone.

Except he wasn't alone at all. Not ever. Not since the Enterprise.

It was an insignificant ship on an insignificant mission to an insignificant planet and all the good or all the bad that could have happened, would have happened, should have happened, didn't even really matter because nothing matters, _really_ matters, in the universe.

But it did matter, it mattered to the Continuum because the Continuum was the authority, except not at all, it was just bored, bored and curious, so the least significant of the eternally significant—figure that out yourselves—was sent to help or obstruct or maybe just observe, though what was to be observed wasn't really clear because if the Continuum was omniscient then they knew already what would happen, or maybe they weren't really omniscient at all, who the fuck knows.

All that mattered was that Picard was insignificant, and Q wasn't.

Except he was.

He was insignificant. Picard couldn't have cared less about him, and that was infuriating, or might have been if he had that sort of base reaction, and maybe he did, maybe he was infuriated. Sickened to his core and desperate, because he was already insignificant before they ever met. Insignificant to the continuum. Insignificant to an entire universe who had the audacity to not know who he was, what he was, the power he had or didn't have or wanted; insignificant to a tiny man on a tiny ship from a tiny planet dancing around one tiny star in a million, billion, trillion, infinite stars. And all he wanted, all he craved and demanded and sought and lusted for was to _be significant_.

And that made Picard significant. It made him more significant that he probably ever came to understand. Every human being, every Vulcan, every Cardassian, every fucking Borg in the entire fucking collective ultimately seeks to be a part of something. A role. A place. A duty. It doesn't matter what cultural sugar coating gets smeared across the idea—everyone needs to matter.

Picard mattered. Picard consumed the thoughts of a god, or maybe not a god, probably not a god, probably something else entirely, but a powerful something, a something greater than time and space and thought and existence. Picard ate him alive and never even knew it.

He always knew it.

He knew it every time he woke up to a violating, to an unnerving, to a trilling, awful, wonderful, sickening, exhilarating breath in his ear. He knew it when he fell asleep, pretended to fall asleep, contemplated falling asleep, didn't fall asleep because he wasn't alone and he knew it, he could feel it, he could smell it, he could taste it. Slightly salty when he'd lick his lips, tasting like thumbprints and adulation. And sometimes he'd lay there and let himself be touched, and breathed upon. Be loathed and lamented and adored. Sometimes he'd pretend to be asleep and sometimes he'd see just how far it'd go, and it was never very far, maybe because Q knew and maybe because he _didn't_ know, didn't know he was waiting for it.

He wasn't.

He was.

Space was incredible. Space was frightening. It was forgetful, and it was lonely.

But only sometimes.


End file.
